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    Vim and Extend

    • Started by Andrew256
    • 4 Replies:
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    • Registered: 07-Dec-2017
    • Posts: 9

    Hi everyone

    Picked up Colemak just recently, still doing baby steps but enjoying so far. While trying out CAW mod, I've ran into Extend mod and the idea seems very intriguing. The problem is that I'm already a Vim user and Vim hotkeys are all part of my muscle memory. I'm afraid that if I pick Extend, I'll start to confuse the two methods since Extend and Vim both focus on navigation and editing without moving your hands away from typing position, but they achieve it differently.

    So, have any one been using Vim and Extend together?

    Btw, I've seen some Colemak mappings for Vim, but the problem is I often work in Vim on other PCs, not to mention I'm using other programs with Vim-like motion, so I'm not ready to remap Vim completely.

    Last edited by Andrew256 (08-Dec-2017 22:41:00)
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    • From: UK
    • Registered: 14-Apr-2014
    • Posts: 975

    I don't use vim that often, but when I do, I certainly use it with Extend. But then, I've always thought that HJKL navigation was daft — if anything it should have been (qwerty) IJKL.

    What I do is use Extend for the standard movement functions, arrow keys etc, but for all other vim functions, use the usual letters in their Colemak positions. It did take a bit of getting used to as the muscle memory for functions is somewhat independent of the letter, but I still think it's the best way.

    Last edited by stevep99 (10-Dec-2017 15:16:33)

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
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    I don't get that vimmers complain about remapping since Vim is for the most part based on letter mnemonics anyway. To get the g commands you press g – regardless of where the g is. The only problem would be more positional commands like the arrows and like stevep said it's easy to use Extend arrows in their place (or just use the hjkl keys in their new positions if you're okay with that).

    The thing I love about Extend is that it's omnimode, omniapp, even portable across OSes for the most part.

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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    • Registered: 08-Oct-2017
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    I'm a very frequent vim user, it's my main text editor, I use hjkl very seldomly, and I favour the other navigational commands, even before switching to colemak, just get used to using them, and using vim will be no harder than before colemak, and using the extend layer stuff that is available in all programs is also really great, so I don't see how that is a bad thing.

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    • Registered: 07-Dec-2017
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    Thank you all who replied. Actually I'm of the same opinion, but I wanted to be sure this is a universally correct way to use Vim with Colemak and I'm not gonna have to retrain my muscle memory again down the line when I could optimize something better

    Thanks!

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